Maine Public Service workers shed light on Fort Kent center

FORT KENT – It’s one of the great ironies for Maine winter outdoor sports that some of the season’s best training conditions coincide with the shortest days of the year.

Those few hours of available daylight make it especially difficult for student athletes to hit the trails and slopes before dark, so the folks at the Maine Winter Sports Center in Fort Kent decided to give Mother Nature a hand with the help of more than a dozen Maine Public Service Co. employees.

Members and former members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1837 gave up a Saturday of watching football, hunting or working around the house to volunteer their time running wires and installing fixtures in the blustery cold to light up 2.6 kilometers of biathlon trail at the MWSC.

“We had been looking for a community project to work on,” Bob Reed, MPS lead worker, said Saturday during a brief break while he sat in a warm truck. “This is a great way to show our support, plus this is a super project.”

MPS involvement began with a call for support from Danny Nicolas, lineman and longtime volunteer in Fort Kent area skiing projects.

“Danny put a bug in our ear and we were happy to help out,” Reed said.

Buzzing around the site on Saturday on an ATV and transporting equipment, wire and workers, Nicolas said he was pleased with the IBEW’s response.

“This is a big deal for the community,” he said. “I thought this would be a nice way for us to get involved.”

Preparing to scale a pole and hang a light, Ricky Cox, MPS lineman from Presque Isle, was happy to donate his time running and connecting 10,000 feet of electrical wire and 60 lights.

“I’m with the union and there’s a lot of us who don’t mind helping out when we’re asked,” he said. “We just want to get this all done before the snow flies.”

Down the trail, Reed supervised the stringing of new wire. “A lot of time `Joe Public’ only hears about organized labor when there is a contract dispute,” he said. “Labor does a lot more than just negotiate for positive wages and working conditions. We do these kinds of things, too.”

Evidence of the members’ commitment, said Reed, is the fact that several former members who currently hold management positions also showed up to volunteer their time.

Not lost on either Reed or Cox is the connection beyond the electrical that the crew now has with the MWSC. Though neither has attended a live biathlon event, both now say they will be keeping an eye on the local athletes.

“There could potentially be an Olympic champion coming from this area,” Reed said.

Self-dubbed as a “gopher,” Peter Pinette, Fort Kent volunteer with the MWSC, spent Saturday lending a hand wherever needed.

“Maybe this [lighting] would have happened without the MPS involvement,” Pinette said. “But it would not have happened in one day. Their expertise is invaluable to us.”

While IBEW members and other volunteers worked on the lighting, a second crew of local volunteers worked not far away cutting brush and clearing trails.

“There must be more than 30 volunteers here today,” Carl Theriault, MWSC board member, said after he finished adjusting a mechanical wood chipper.

Above the combined noise of the chipper and chain saws, Theriault had high praise for the MPS volunteers. “If it had not been for them, we probably could not have afforded all the lighting,” he said.

MWSC had budgeted $60,000 for lighting the 2.6 kilometers of trail, Theriault said.

“That crew must be giving us $10,000 worth of work today,” he said. Thanks to that volunteer effort, the entire lighting project will probably come in at around $40,000.

“This lighted trail is going to open up a lot more skiing and give us a lot longer to train,” Theriault said, noting it gets dark as early at 3:30 p.m. in the deep winter months. “And now is when we get some of the best training conditions,” he said.

The IBEW’s efforts are in keeping with the spirit that has brought the MWSC in Fort Kent from the drawing board to hosting national and international events in less than a year, Theriault said.

“Volunteering, that’s what we are trying to do here to keep this going,” he said.

In March, an army of local volunteers worked on and off the biathlon ranges when back-to-back events were abruptly moved to Fort Kent after venues in Canada and New York ran out of snow.

MWSC officials hope to turn the lights on this week.

“It’s going to look like a Christmas tree when it’s all lit up,” Theriault said.